If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by paulwl

It's competitive as hell making it your living. Sport...ok, I don't know.

Yes, it can be but I get a sense that many of the guys out there are just following their passion and vision. If it was all about making a living they would all be trying to play Kenny G type music. I see these amazing players playing in clubs with 10 people in them and playing their hearts out. I think the bread would be nice but most of these guys are just following their passion and hoping the bread follows.

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by paulwl

OK, but what if your passion is just to kick everyone else's a?

Hey, their passion might well be that but you know what......at their funeral what people might come will say "That guy was a killer sax player but what an a**!" That's not what life is about. It's not who you can burn, it's about what positive impact you can have on the world. (and by world I mean whatever person you are interacting with whether it be on SOTW or on a gig or on the subway.........)

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Well, positive impact is what they'll remember when you're gone...but competitiveness is all that will keep you alive and relevant until then. I spent 18 years in New York, but I didn't have the stomach to keep up with the pace, so I got passed by. I only stayed on because I couldn't imagine it would be any better elsewhere.

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by Watsonp143

why make music a competition sport.

I'd say there's mansions aplenty for that too!

For some musicians--I'm thinking of the blues great Little Walter, for instance--a kind of vicious, cut-throat, dog-eat-dog competiton for money and status was really all music was. That's how he experienced it, but of course his experience only defined it for him (and to some extent the people he played/lived with).

Martin "Dick Stabile" Tenor: Barone Jazz 7*/GW7

"The spiritual life is built upon a commitment to truth telling and truth living. As master jazz musicians, [John Coltrane and Miles Davis] presented their spirituality within the reality of cool." --Farah Jasmine Griffen and Salim Washington

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by Nefertiti

Hey, their passion might well be that but you know what......at their funeral what people might come will say "That guy was a killer sax player but what an a**!" That's not what life is about. It's not who you can burn, it's about what positive impact you can have on the world. (and by world I mean whatever person you are interacting with whether it be on SOTW or on a gig or on the subway.........)

Amen!

My mother actually married a guy who fits that description to a T. He was a jazz drummer. This guy was truly a monster player whose thing was the 60s avant garde school (Beaver Harris, etc.); he eked out a living doing everything from Big Band to Clown Band. The guy could play, and went to his grave chain smoking and practicing 6 hours a day with lead drumsticks for a gig he was never going to get. Physically and spiritually, he was totally rotten inside. Hated everything and everybody. I'm not sure anybody even went to his funeral.

Art is like that--it is beautiful, but often not very pretty.

Martin "Dick Stabile" Tenor: Barone Jazz 7*/GW7

"The spiritual life is built upon a commitment to truth telling and truth living. As master jazz musicians, [John Coltrane and Miles Davis] presented their spirituality within the reality of cool." --Farah Jasmine Griffen and Salim Washington

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

This stuff is fantastic. We need more players aspiring to this kind of thing. I mean I love Chris Potter's stuff, but this is great too and I don't think we should be telling all young people they need to play like Coltrane and Brecker and Potter or else their playing will be "dated" and "out of style". Harry Allen, this kind of thing......this is how saxophonists used to sound and play back when people actually LISTENED to jazz.

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by Eye Kwubeck

This stuff is fantastic. We need more players aspiring to this kind of thing. I mean I love Chris Potter's stuff, but this is great too and I don't think we should be telling all young people they need to play like Coltrane and Brecker and Potter or else their playing will be "dated" and "out of style". Harry Allen, this kind of thing......this is how saxophonists used to sound and play back when people actually LISTENED to jazz.

I always wonder what current players would sound like if they took their inspiration from different sources. What would a modern player with Chris Potter's talent sound like if they took their influence from Prez and Ben Webster rather than a Trane/Brecker style.

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

All true. But have you seen the crowds "listenable" jazz pulls in? They're not hip and happening people anymore!

Do you know about the "Jazz Party Circuit"? Harry is well loved there along with a few dozen other straight-ahead, swing-to-bop players (Warren Vaché on trumpet, Dan Barrett, trombone, and Howard Alden, guitar come to mind).

Jazz Parties happen in the same locations annually (my hometown, Ames, IA, used to have one until one guy died and everybody else felt too old and tired to keep it going without him). There are many different locations, even aboard cruise ships, but the musicians all come from New York. Arbors and Concord are record labels that frequently feature them. It's all small-group standards. No one ever sits in. The audiences are pretty much the same few thousand folks every year, all affluent, all retired, all White.

The parties can't go on much longer - they're a thing of a generation, and even that generation didn't start doing them till middle-age. Now the scene is going to pass. Maybe good, because the style, set list, and especially personnel are very rigid - but maybe not so good, because nothing is going to replace them. The listenable style of jazz will lose the biggest part of its listeners.

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by paulwl

Not at all! I just wanted to be sure it wasn't a backhanded compliment.

It's a damn shame, is all, that Harry gets typed as a niche player when he has such deep influences, while tenorists who have no sound and do nothing but sperg-out on the changes get acclaimed as righteously creative artists.

Harry is one of the only bebop/swing tenormen with a career these days. He's quite lucky. Naturally he deserves it but there are a pile of cats with his ability and artistic prowess that really get overlooked and/or typecast. Dan Block, Chris Byars, Jerry Weldon, Bill Easley and so on. Too bad there isn't room for all of us who just want to swing, play pretty and entertain jazz fans.

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by LiAm84

I always wonder what current players would sound like if they took their inspiration from different sources. What would a modern player with Chris Potter's talent sound like if they took their influence from Prez and Ben Webster rather than a Trane/Brecker style.

I guess something like this young and very talented guy from the UK (do you know him ?):

Re: Harry Allen - Sublime Sound

Originally Posted by Eye Kwubeck

This stuff is fantastic. We need more players aspiring to this kind of thing. I mean I love Chris Potter's stuff, but this is great too and I don't think we should be telling all young people they need to play like Coltrane and Brecker and Potter or else their playing will be "dated" and "out of style". Harry Allen, this kind of thing......this is how saxophonists used to sound and play back when people actually LISTENED to jazz.